Her Body is a Weapon
by escritoireazul
Summary: Beiste is probably the most badass adult Lauren's ever met.


**Title:** Her Body is a Weapon  
><strong>Author:<strong> escritoireazul  
><strong>CharactersPairings:** Lauren Zizes, Shannon Beiste, Noah Puckerman, Lauren Zizes/Noah Puckerman  
><strong>Written for:<strong> Technically, it is a fill for this prompt for the glee_fluff_meme (summarized): Beiste tries to recruit Lauren for football, fails, and they bond. However, it became decidedly unfluffy by the end. Also written to celebrate two amazing women.  
><strong>Author's note:<strong> This is a transformative work of fiction for the television show Glee.

**Summary: **Beiste is probably the most badass adult Lauren's ever met.

* * *

><p>"Zizes," Beiste snaps. "Come talk to me."<p>

Lauren hates the clang of weights - that's just _sloppy_, letting them hit when you rack them - but her thoughts are turned so far inside, caught in the solid ache in her muscles and all the focus she needs for her perfect form, that when Beiste bursts into the weight room and yells for her, Lauren misses the edge of the rack and slams metal to metal. Her spotter is slacking - it's the end of a long hour of lifting and she hardly ever needs him anyway - and for a second she's pretty sure she's about to drop the bar and all the weight right on her face.

Then Green grabs it and they get the bar steadied. Lauren slides it home and sits up. Her hair is matted and sweat sticks her shirt to her back. It's late May, almost the end of the school year, and so freaking hot in the weight room. She lets herself just breathe for a second, trying to come back to herself.

Beiste looms, her arms crossed over her chest, but she waits Lauren out.

The wrestlers have the weight room right now, not the football team. The wrestling coach is in the corner, yelling at a couple of the freshman who are just flat slacking off. Or possibly have collapsed from exhaustion. Whatever.

It boils down to this: Lauren's surrounded by the rest of the wrestling team and maybe they didn't want her at first and maybe she had to force her way in just to get a chance to try out, but she's proven herself and proven herself and proven herself, and this is her space now. So this interruption, this football invasion, it's really fucking weird.

But the Beast? The Beast is basically the most badass adult Lauren's ever met, except for her mom and dad, so she takes her minute, wipes down the bench, clears the weights off the bar, and then, clutching her water bottle in one hand, she follows Beiste out.

#

Beiste actually has her own office now that her boys won the championship, which is weird. Not that she doesn't deserve it - hell, she's a winning football coach, the rest of the sports teams are lucky she hasn't taken _everything_ - but Lauren has a hard time picturing her sitting behind a desk. On the field, in the weight room, screaming her head off in the locker room, yeah. In an office? What the hell is this?

It's a pretty plain office, Beiste hasn't put much of herself in it. She sits on the edge of her desk and jabs two fingers at the chair in front of her. Lauren eyes it, because sometimes chairs with arms are a little tight at her hips, but it looks big enough. It's not terribly comfortable, but she doesn't plan to stick around long.

She stares at Beiste and Beiste stares right back - _she who looks into the eyes of the beast_ and Lauren presses her tongue against her teeth so she won't smile - then nods. Lauren has no idea why she's nodding like that.

"You should come to tryouts," Beiste says. Lauren crosses her arms over her chest, an automatic, thoughtless move that gives her a second to deal with it, but Beiste is already talking again.

"You took to football like a goose to a tree." By now, Lauren's stopped trying to figure out what the hell Beiste means when she starts in on her sayings. She crosses her arms, too, and Lauren is struck by how they must look, both scowling and closed off. They must look like they hate each other, but that's not it at all.

(That's why you shouldn't fucking judge, okay. Goddamn.)

"It was fun." Lauren can admit that much. Then she frowns. "No thanks."

The face Beiste makes is fucking priceless. "Why not?"

Lauren's throat is hot and dry. Beiste's office is even more stifling than the weight room. No wonder she doesn't spend much time back here. She slugs some water and wipes her mouth clean with the back of her hand.

"I can't. You don't let your team play other sports."

Yeah, Lauren's given this some thought. Of course she has, because hitting those guys, snarling into their laughing faces and laying them flat, knocking all the air out of them and grinding them into the dirt, that was just plain _fun_. The only thing she loves better than proving that girls can be just as badass as guys is actually being badass and slamming around her opponents. Football can give her both those things.

The thing is this: Wrestling can give her even more. It already has. She's being recruited and she's not even a fucking senior yet. Wrestling is one of her ways out. She gets good grades and she's going to get out because of her brains, but she's going to get out because of her body, too. She's going to get the hell out of Lima, Ohio and there is no way in hell she's giving up one of her ways out. Lima sucks you in and doesn't let go. She wants back-ups of her back-ups.

So Beiste may be badass and football felt awesome, but in the end, she's already made her choice.

"You want to wrestle." Beiste's voice is low, but she doesn't sound pissed. Well, no, she totally sounds pissed, but Lauren can tell she isn't really mad. That's just how she sounds all the time, and Lauren gets that.

"Too bad." Beiste stands. "You would have been a hell of a player."

"Yeah, I know." Lauren gets up too, and for a second she just stands there, because goddamn, it feels good to be wanted. She fought so fucking hard and pounded her way onto the wrestling team and even after she made it - even after she started _winning_ - a lot of the time it sucked. It's better now, she's put the fear of Lauren fucking Zizes into all of them, but they didn't want her and they didn't want her and they didn't want her, and here is a fucking coach who does. Lauren fists her hands. "Thanks."

Beiste claps her on the shoulder and sends her on her way.

#

In October - senior year is already dragging and she's so close to being free she can taste it - the official offers start coming in, a couple from schools and a couple from pro wrestling. She stares at the papers and sits down with her parents, but they never had the chance to go to college, and none of them have any idea what to do.

Lauren could go to the guidance counselor or she could go to Mr. Schue or, hell, probably she should go to her own coach. Instead, she shoves all the pages into a big folder and drags it around with her all day. She hits the weight room while the football team's on the field, but she's cleaned up and chilling in the hall by the locker room when the guys start pouring out after.

She didn't say anything to Puck, but he's got some fucking sixth sense or something and heads straight for her. He's smirking, but his eyes are soft, and her heart gives this little squeeze. (It was a really, really dumb idea to let herself care so much. Senior year is ticking down slow, but sometimes, when she looks at him, time goes so fast she can't breathe and she doesn't know how the hell she's going to deal with leaving him behind. She'll figure that out later. Maybe.)

"Well this is a nice surprise," he drawls and presses his fingers against her arm. She pushes her elbow into his side and grinds it a little.

"I'm not waiting for you, Puckerman."

"Oh yeah? Whose ass do I need to kick?" He growls it out, but he's leaning even closer to her and god, okay, yes, she would like to get him alone right the fuck now.

"You really think you can take Beiste?" Lauren narrows her eyes at him. He stiffens and pulls away from her a little and she arches an eyebrow. What the hell's that all about? "I've got a question for her."

He relaxes and settles against the wall next to her. They aren't quite close enough to touch, but that's okay, because she knows the feel of every inch of him, knows the sound of his breath and how mad he gets - anger tempered with futility sometimes - when he thinks someone's calling him a Lima Loser and the way he goes all soft around his sister and his Nana and how his hands shake so hard and the shadows under his eyes get so thick around Beth's birthday.

_Damn it._

She clutches the folder and stares hard at the locker room door, waiting for the Beast.

#

"I need help." Lauren has never said it so plain before, but in Beiste's office, slumping forward in the visitor's chair, the door shut against everyone else, she feels inexplicably open - and safe. She slaps the folder down on the desk, and Beiste actually sits down in her chair to take a look at it, but that's not all Lauren needs. Beiste doesn't ask, just opens the folder and starts flipping through the papers, glowering at them sometimes.

Lima feels so small most of the time, strangling her every time she tries to be herself, trying to push her into a tiny little box with how she should look and how she should act and what she can want from her life, but her way out is there, right there in front of her. She's down to the wire, the last few seconds before the pin, and as long as she doesn't fuck it up, she's out of here.

There's no way in hell she wants to stay, no way in hell, but suddenly, with the future flashing open in front of her, adventures untold, she realizes she has no fucking idea how to walk away from her whole goddamn life.

It's not just Puckerman. It _is_ Puckerman, but it's Tina and Quinn and Sam too - okay, _fine_, it's the whole goddamn glee club, are you _happy_ - and her parents and the wrestling team and this town where she knows every street and the stores that have come and gone and the reservoir. It's throwing guys around and snapping at Santana and singing and dancing and sci-fi movie nights and throwing popcorn at each other and a half hour of making out for a half hour of studying. It's hitting the library with the littlest Puckerman and playing records with Mom and Dad and counting the days until Dad gets a break from the road and it sucks so hard when she hasn't seen him in weeks and he's just a voice on the other end of the phone. It's a hot boy with bedroom eyes and a guitar and a song blooming when she kisses him. It's her room and her car and her gym. It's all the places she's carved out for herself in a town that wants to hate her, and she hates it right back, hates it so much sometimes it makes her want to hit things until her knuckles split and bleed.

But it's all she's ever known and leaving is suddenly so very real.

Lauren clenches her hands into fists and presses them into her thighs. Beiste was new last year, to McKinley, to _Ohio_. She knows how to leave people behind. She knows how to say good-bye.

Beiste is watching her, waiting it out, and Lauren sucks in a breath, trying to find the voice she never knew she could lose.

"I don't know _where_ to go," she says, but what she means is _how_.

Beiste nods and leans forward, resting her forearms against the edge of her desk. Her face is still set in a scowl, but there's a gentleness in the line of her mouth and understanding in her eyes.

"It can be hard as hell," she says and Lauren bites down on her tongue because that's the kind of pain she understands, the kind of pain she knows how to survive.

#

At Christmas, Lauren shoves a hastily wrapped gift into Beiste's mailbox at school and avoids her the rest of the day. She's never been good at saying thank you.


End file.
